


Stocked Full of It

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angry Phil, Angst, Dan - Freeform, Kinda, M/M, Phil - Freeform, dan is just trying to adult, fluffy comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 02:11:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12159483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dan gets bored and decides to research the stock market. Something new that Phil won't have done before. Something to make Phil proud and impressed with him.But Dan doesn't really know what he's doing.





	Stocked Full of It

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning on writing more and more because I have a bit of free time at the moment... financial literacy is good, kids! Don't do drugs!!!

Light streamed into Dan’s room as the sun rose. As the rays caressed the sleeping man’s face, he stirred slowly, and in a sleepy state, was unable to work out what time it was and why his room was so bright.

Dan leaned over to his bedside table as he got his bearings.

6:17am.

_What the actual fuck._

The man frustratingly shifted back to smash his head back into the pillow and try to fall asleep. But there was no point; he’d forgotten to close his blinds the previous night.

There was nothing sounding in the apartment, so Dan knew that Phil, being as clumsy and noisy as he always was in the mornings, could not possibly be awake.

So, Dan started his day by scrolling through Tumblr, reblogging some phan art as usual. He appreciated the effort his followers went to, and he liked it that they wanted to make things for him and got happiness out of it, just like he hoped he did for them.

Of course in time, he’d become bored of scrolling through various aesthetic blogs and the like.

 

Scouring social media for interesting things to read kept the man occupied for what felt like another hour or so, but in truth it had only been 25 minutes.

Sighing, Dan searched for something else. Anything else.

And that’s when he happened upon an advertisement. The chance to do something professional. Of course, he never thought of YouTube as “kidding around” necessarily, but he knew it couldn’t last his whole life – and he might like this as a side project, and maybe to do something new that Phil hadn’t done before. Dan could have his own thing, and he couldn’t wait to surprise Phil and make him proud.

The advertisement carried Dan from an article on Cole Sprouse’s perfect burger eating face to the app store, where he quickly downloaded ‘London Stock Exchange’.

Shares and investment wasn’t terribly hard, anyone could do it, really!

_You just gotta buy low and sell high, right? I mean, how hard can that be?_

In just a few moments, Dan had made an account, linked it to his bank, and was faced with a page full of companies trading on the London Stock Exchange.

Dan hadn’t noticed that the sun had fully risen now, and was pleased that his interest in the companies that were listed was keeping him occupied and passing time quickly. There quite a few that he had already heard of; Easyjet, Burberry, The Just Group, the choices were endless really!

Dan enjoyed feeling like he was an adult, and he loved that by the time Phil would be awake, he could show what he’d found and maybe the things he’d bought into.

Hopefully, the investments could grow and they could make some money. Maybe one day they could use it to retire. But Dan knew Phil, he’d likely claim that they didn’t really do anything to earn the money and say that they needed to give it to a charity. But that was a nice idea too, and Dan knew it’d make him feel good about himself and his purpose in life.

Dan shortlisted the names of companies he liked, not based on any specific criteria, just ones he’d heard people talk a lot about, ones that had been in the news.

The Just Group, HSBC, Shaftesbury, Royal Mail, JPMorgan. He saw City of London Trust as well – that looked interesting too, Dan lived in London!

_You have to invest in the hand that feeds you stuff right?_

He got giddy as he combed through charts for various companies. Some had prices that were too high and would probably crash down, others weren’t really going anywhere. Dan had to admit, he felt so accomplished and smart making these decisions.

So, when it finally came to buying, even though Dan wasn’t sure he fully understood every bit of information offered to him, he felt good. He was sure that P/E ratios weren’t too important, trading volume didn’t matter a heap. It was all basically akin to gambling anyway.

He bought 100 shares of Royal Mail. They’d been around forever and he wanted to contribute to things getting delivered to people on time, so why not?

He really couldn’t wait to show Phil what he’d done, and he loved the feeling of excitement and anticipation that he got when he refreshed the “Portfolio” section of the app and saw that someone had thought that his bid was at a good price, the order went through and now he was officially an investor!

Dan sat in bed as the sun rose further, as clashing pots and pans from the kitchen rang awful sounds around the apartment when Phil made breakfast, but Dan didn’t mind.

He kept refreshing the Portfolio tab – there was something that made him feel powerful as he saw a green arrow pointing upwards, and a bunch of statistics and numbers on the page. The price was going up and Dan had already earned a few hundred quid! He felt proud of himself, and it felt nice to be financially responsible. And to make these transactions without having to ask anyone for permission. It was his money. Well, his and Phil’s, he thought.

 

“Dan! I made some coffee, do you want some? I got eggs or shreddies down here too!” Phil yelled out to him.

Dan remembered his friend, and suddenly jumped out of bed to run up to Phil and show him what he’d done. With a big smile on his face, Dan rushed into the kitchen, almost stubbing his toe on a chair, as Phil chuckled at his best friend.

“Jeez Dan, what’s gotten into you? You’re cheery for the morning,” Phil asked, smiling back at Dan. It was nice to see him happy at least.

“Phil you won’t believe it, I had a look online and found a stock market thing and I decided to give it a go and I’ve already made a few hundred quid doing it!” Dan exclaimed excitedly, pushing the phone screen to Phil’s face and looked at Phil’s head, waiting for him to pull his eyes up and smile at Dan, perhaps ask him questions and get excited with him. It was more fun when two people could share a happy moment like this one.

“Uhm, Dan, what have you done?” Phil asked, getting really worried as he looked up to Dan, who was still so excited about all this – and Phil wasn’t really sure what to tell the man.

“What do you mean ‘what have I done’? I bought some shares and I came down to show you because it’s really fun watching the numbers move and it’s easy and the money just _comes in_ ,” Dan said, attempting to reassure his friend. But Phil wasn’t convinced.

Instead, Phil showed Dan the screen.

Dan’s heart dropped and the smile was wiped right off his face.

The green arrows were gone, and the nice little numbers showing Dan how much he’d made were gone too.

Instead, Dan saw a sea of red arrows pointing downwards, and a huge number in bold and red at the top of the screen.

“Dan, what did you do?”

“I bought… about 100 shares, at about 350 quid each?”

“Dan, you see this number up here?” Phil asked, pointing to the big red bold one, “I really need you to talk it through with me before you make big decisions, Dan! Couldn’t you just do that for me?” Phil raised his voice, getting extremely upset, “would that be so hard Dan?”

“But Phil, it’s all fine! I’m making money for us, so we can buy all the things we want to have, so I can take you out on nice dinners after a long week, you know? Just something extra to have in our pockets for a rainy day!” Dan explained. He felt less and less happy when he saw Phil’s disappointed look. He really wanted to be an adult and manage his money, and it felt damn good to take the responsibility.

“Dan, you lost almost £2000 in less than a day,” Phil whispered, shocked, “it’s barely noon.”

“But that can’t be right, I was looking at it before, it said I’d _made_ money!”

“Well Dan, that’s how the stock market works, it can turn on you at any time. I just wish you have’ve talked to me before buying…” Phil said sternly, feeling that he needed to just… pull Dan back from the edge before he ruined their ability to eat and live.

Phil’s eyes widened as he looked again, “DAN WHAT THE FUCK,” Phil yelled, scaring Dan who at this point began to feel tears welling up in his eyes. “You bought… £38000? In one company? DAN! WHY would you do that?!”

“I just wanted to make something and to do something different to you, and you know…” Dan paused as a tear escaped his eyes, “I wanted to make you proud of me, I really did.” Dan buried his face into his hands, and he felt alone.  “You’re the YouTuber, and I came to it because I wanted to be like you, well I wanted to do something different and make you proud of me for finally growing out of being ‘Phil Trash’ and into someone you’d want to call your friend.”

Phil’s eyes widened as a wash of guilt pulled over him; Dan was just _trying_ and even though it wasn’t a good decision, and even though Phil was honestly scared for their savings… Dan was trying to do something good.

“Dan, really, I’m sorry that I yelled, I appreciate your intentions, but this is a huge mistake.” No matter how guilty Phil felt, there was no time to spare Dan’s feelings. Phil needed to work out what Dan had done and how to stop them from losing any further. But the words bit into Dan’s heart and he felt more tears streaming down his face.

_You’re a fucking idiot, a piece of shit. Phil isn’t proud of you, you can’t be a proper adult. All you can do is ruin everything and destroy your life. But why did you have to destroy Phil’s too? You’re a fucking child._

“This _IS_ a huge mistake, Dan. You really should have done more research, and you should have talked to me,” Phil said, more calmly this time, taking his friend into his arms, “but it’s okay, at least you didn’t pick something that won’t come back up shortly… I just… Dan the first rule of investing is not to overcommit, you put in almost all your money and most of mine into one enterprise,” Dan picked his head up to look at Phil, and the older man gave him a smile which let Dan know that, while he was frustrated and maybe a bit angry, he didn’t hate his friend.

“The second rule, do you know what PEG Ratios are? Or anything else about investing? You can’t just look at graphs and expect it to work out well…” Phil said, and Dan felt even more shame knowing that he was right – Dan really didn’t have a clue what anything in this financial world meant, and he felt like a child again. He didn’t have the strength to defend himself, he was done being a disappointment and just chose to keep his mouth shut.

“Although I guess I used to like making houses made out of cardboard as a kid, so maybe we will be alright in the end.”

“I’m sorry, Phil,” Dan let out a cry, “I was bored and I can’t deal with the idea of one day waking up, being a sad 40 year old… and still thinking that my only chance at providing for you, for us, is through YouTube, living off the public’s good opinion of us,” Dan explained.

“Dan, your heart was in the right place, and hey, we’ll sit down and work it out together. But just please don’t make decisions like this without telling me,” Phil resolved, “I’ll always be proud of you, and hey, I think…”

The two men looked at Dan’s phone screen and saw it light up.

“Dan, the market went up again, your stock appreciated!”

“Wait what? Seriously? Just like that?” Dan asked as a bit of his dignity and pride was restored, “how much did we get?”

“Uhm… well, it says you paid £15 for brokerage and transaction fees, so let’s take that off… and it looks like this company franks 70%...” Phil continued saying things that Dan did not understand. And he realised how out of his depth he actually was. It was mildly embarrassing.

“So, after you pay your tax on what you earned, you will have made the lucrative sum of… £2.73!” Phil stated, clapping his hands together unsarcastically and smiling at Dan.

“Wait what? Is that seriously all?” Dan asked in astonishment, and wiping the last of his tears off his face as he saw an end to the nightmare of the past 30 minutes.

“Dan, the issue with shares is that you have to be pretty wealthy already and you have to know a lot and spend heaps of time learning and watching the markets. You can’t just buy and sell, because you always pay fees and you always pay most of it back in taxes,” Phil explained, and Dan felt a little better that he was at least learning something.

"Dammit Phil, I'm so sorry, I just wanted to try," Dan apologised as he bowed his head in shame.

“Dan, it's alright now that we know we can still afford to eat, just as long as you learned something out of all this..." Phil said calmly, which caused Dan to nod in agreement at the principle, even letting out a weak smile.

"Well, I guess I can go to Tesco and get that ice cream you like with the profits..." Dan joked weakly, and giving Phil a truly apologetic look.

“That might actually be nice. And maybe we can talk about money and I can show you what I know while we both devour a tub," Phil offered, which sounded like quite a decent offer to Dan. He could feel responsible and adult that way.

"Now come on, I think those fried eggs I was making for us are almost ready.”

"Assuming you don't end up getting me to remake the eggs after you drop them on the floor while flipping them, I'll get some anime ready!" Dan teased.

Things looked happy again, and after buying a tub of ice cream, 23p would still be better than nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Lol had to actually google "tub of ice cream tesco" to work out what price it would be. Dan and Phil are lucky it's on sale for £2.50 atm, but hurry SALE ENDS ON 25th SEPTEMBER!!!!


End file.
